by the Councillor D' Eckartshausen
Translated by Madame Isabel de Steiger

This document is scanned from the periodical "The Unknown
World". The title page of each of the eleven issues identifies it as "a
magazine devoted to the Occult Sciences, Magic, Mystical Philosophy,
Alchemy, Hermetic Archeology, and the Hidden Problems of Science
Literature, Speculation and History. Edited by Arthur Edward Waite."
This was the first appearance of Mme. de Steiger's
translation, one of the six letters per issue, beginning in
January of 1895 and completed in June. In
1896 it was published as a small book with a Preface by J. W.
Brodie-Innes. A second book, with an Introduction by Waite, was
published in 1903.
"Born in 1875 of Plymouth Brethren stock, Aleister Crowley had
read, while still an undergraduate at Cambridge, a book by A. E. Waite
and, inspired by some dark hints given in the introduction to this
book, had written to Waite asking if there was a 'Secret Sanctuary' to
which he could gain admittance. Waite had sent a kindly, if a little
unhelpful, reply, urging the young aspirant to read Madame de Steiger's
translation of an eighteenth-century mystical work The Cloud on the
Sanctuary.
Crowley did this..." (King, Modern Ritual Magic)
"Unknown to herself, translating Eckartshausen was the single
most significant act of her occult life, for this was the book used by
A. E. Waite to persuade Aleister Crowley to take the path that led to
the Golden Dawn." (Gilbert, Golden Dawn, Twilight of the Magicians
)

With Introductory Notes taken from "Hermetic Papers of A.E. Waite", edited
by R.A Gilbert (Aquarian Press,1987). Text scanned from the periodical "The
Unknown World".

[First printed in the monthly journal The Unknown World from August to December 1894 and in April, 1895. It was reprinted in The Alchemical Papers of Arthur Edward Waite, ed. J. Ray Shute, Monroe, N.C., 1939, a privately printed collection limited to seventy copies.]
In his earlier writings on alchemy Waite maintained that the spiritual interpretation of alchemy was first systematically presented by Mrs. Atwood in her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery -a point of view that he was later to reject completely, to the extent of saying that the book 'is not, however, final or satisfactory as a critical study, indeed, in some respects it is a morass rather than a pathway' (The Secret Tradition in Freemasony, 1911, Vol.2, p. 414). For this he was taken to task, in the pages of the Occult Review, by Isabelle de Steiger; but he justified himself by stating that 'What I said of the Suggestive Enquiry in 1888 and 1893 was in the light of my knowledge at those dates; that which I have recorded since has been under a fuller and clearer light' (Occult Review, Vol. 15, No.1. January 1912, p. 50). Nonetheless, his early essays on alchemy retain their value for the obscure information they contain and for their critical comments on Madame Blavatsky's dubious manipulation of her source material on alchemy.

Waite, first in "The Key to the Tarot" (p.74), and again in "The Pictorial Key
to the Tarot" (p. 61), writes "The spiritual side of Alchemy is set forth in the
much stranger emblems of the Book of Lambspring, and of this I have already
given a preliminary interpretation, to which the reader may be referred." Here is
the article to which he refers.
From "The Occult Review", vol. 8, no. 5, November 1908.

The Pictorial Symbols of Alchemy, actually the second of two related
articles, refers more than once to "the previous paper". This is that first
article.
From "The Occult Review", vol. 8, no. 4, October 1908.

Waite's original Grand Orient offering, "A Handbook of Cartomancy", was
published in 1889. In 1909
"A Manual of Cartomancy" appeared, heavily revised with a few additional chapters.
The title page identifies the book as the fourth edition (it was actually the second)
and it is this edition that is reproduced by University Books and others, and is the
one you find on the shelves at Barnes & Noble today.
In 1912 a fifth edition (actually the third) appeared, essentially identical
to the fourth (second), but containing two additional chapters. This is one of those two additional chapters.